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Jake writes "The US government's 11-page document on how to get various US government agencies to prevent future leaks has been leaked. It doesn't get any more ironic than that. After the various leaks made by WikiLeaks, the US government understandably wants to limit the number of potential leaks, but their strategy apparently isn't implemented yet. It's clear that the Obama administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive steps to prevent further leaks. According to the document, these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness. The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have."

or perhaps the number one thing the government could do to prevent leaks in future would be to... i don't know... *NOT DO ILLEGAL SHIT* or, and i know i'm way off base, *NOT SUBVERT ITS OWN IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY*

But, sadly James Earl Jones already played the US Government:

Whistler: "I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men."Bernard Abbott: "We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing."

What there is was competition between participants in the press. They worked to scoop their competition and gain market share. It was a constant battle between them and being the first to get the dirt that everyone cared about (their government) meant sales. When all the papers and magazines started becoming conglomerations and getting their news from news service agencies, they only need a presence in an area.

I would go a little farther. The voters of the United States has been promised transparency in government. If the USG kept the promise, there would be nothing to leak. Furthermore, with the sheer amount of information that such transparency would generate, we would instantly be in information overload, so the risk of people actually seeing something embarrassing would be reduced.

Remember the movie Class Action? "We ask for a couple of things, and the other side sends the Library of Congress. There must be something there they don't want us to find."

I hate to break the news, but America was involved in World War II as early as 1940. The problem was that the entire U.S. Army consisted of about 30,000 soldiers mostly stationed in the "colonies" of America (the Philippines primarily, although in a few other places too) and of course in a few training bases. Instead, like what Wilson did during World War I, America became the "arsenal of democracy" and all that other BS while Roosevelt tried to build up the armed forces of America. Airmen from America were openly encouraged to join the Royal Air Force to develop some necessary skills (normally that forces you to renounce your citizenship... accepting a position in the officer corps of another country).

By 1941 America was supplying most of the raw materials (steel, grain, and other stuff) to the UK to help fight off Nazi Germany. There were of course indigenous industries in the UK as well, but it was more than a mere supplement to those resources, and Liberty Ship production. At its peak about three ships of this class were launched each day. That is an insane amount of metal, not to mention the contents of those ships was rather large too.

As to if America ought to have been involved to that extent, that is certainly something debatable. The debate about going into World War II was something that was extensive and there certainly were many opinions about the topic well before December 1941. This is a debate that I wish had happened prior to going into Iraq, where I believe a formal declaration of war should have happened... with the territory acquired to become sovereign territory of the USA. If America wasn't prepared to do something that raw, it shouldn't have gone into there in the first place. Ditto for Afghanistan and I dare say Vietnam as well.

It's not ironic. If you look at the PDF of the document itself, every page of the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified, it's not even Official Use Only, from scanning the document I didn't see anything indicating anybody was supposed to restrict its circulation.

If anything, it bothers me a little that techspot is treating this as a coup (it's not even on MSNBC's front page), since there's no reason this document should be kept secret, and thus it should not be, since the policy may affect many people and should therefore be a matter of public discussion. The default in government should be openness, not secrecy.

Are we really this dumb as a society? It's *supposed* to be public. Either it is intended to work while still publicly disclosed or it's a decoy. Of course it could be a test, someone could have forgotten to classify it, or any number of other things could have happened. Just because it is stated that it's to prevent leaks, doesn't mean they want to prevent it from being leaked. Our leaders are often smarter than you give them credit for (and yes, they are often dumber, too).

A colleague who used to work for defense contractors once told me this interesting trick : If you have a boring document that you need every employee to read, instead of just handling it to them, make it secret and give them clearance. That will make them more curious and everybody will read it. Maybe here is a similar strategy : "leak" a document stating how to prevent leaks, and more people will read it than if you just publish it on a governmental website.

A colleague who used to work for defense contractors once told me this interesting trick : If you have a boring document that you need every employee to read, instead of just handling it to them, make it secret and give them clearance. That will make them more curious and everybody will read it.

Your colleague was a liar. Anyone with a clearance knows that 99.999% of classified documents are snore-inducing borefests. To someone with a clearance, getting yet another classified document is just more hassle and is to be avoided if at all possible.

If a document is not classified it is unclassified by definition and can be subject to a FOIA request. It is also not illegal for a government employee to release such a document (though doing so to the embarassment of one's boss could be a career-limiting move).

the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified

I'm not sure about the US system, but in the UK unclassified and not classified are not the same thing at all. I believe this is the same on both sides of the pond.

You would be wrong. Unclassified and not classified mean the same thing in both countries. The US , UK and most of the EU aligned their classification categories quite some time back to facilitate information sharing. Although the UK uses slightly different terms for some things, the categories are the same. Also note that the terms "Restricted" or "For-Official-Use-Only" are not classification levels, they are caveats (ie an additional handling restriction).

It's not ironic. If you look at the PDF of the document itself, every page of the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified, it's not even Official Use Only, from scanning the document I didn't see anything indicating anybody was supposed to restrict its circulation.

BUT IT'S STILL LEAKED BECAUSE IT WASN'T PUBLISHED BY THE GOV'T, MR KILLJOY!

Try to understand the advertisers mind. It's hype. Every press release is a "leak", every publication an "exclusive". Sounds more dramatic, right? Fires everybody up. Makes them forget about the hand reaching in their crotch and grabbing their goodies.

This all makes sense. Because simply reporting any media contact isn't a violation of any of their basic human rights. It's perfectly reasonable that who they talk to be monitored, and all government employees should be subjected to regular mental health screening. They have to make sure these people are the right type and not some crackpots who will leak information that the government doesn't want its people to know.

Silly that anyone would write an article about this, as if it shouldn't be common pract

Who decides what is "the right type" though? In my books, you have to be a crackpot to work for the government. Which makes me a crackpot in their books. Who is right? The one with the bigger sacks of money and the heavier array of disinfo catapults.

Apples and oranges, this isn't a threat of similar severity. Plus, there's a tendency of people to interpret that sort of blanket suspicion as a case of everybody doing it and be more likely to let something slip accidentally.

During the Cold War it was standard to brief military and government employees to be wary of espionage attempts and trust no one.

Yeah, and people generally went along with it. But there's a major difference between that and the current issue. Back then, there was a real foreign enemy trying to harm us. Today, the purported enemy is just ordinary citizens who are trying to expose their own government's corruption to its own voters. I suspect that a large part of our population understands this. The government employees, who see the corruption first hand, certainly do.

I love knowing how America keeps creeping to become more and more like the Soviet Union with a similar kind of loss of privileges.

Where the debate really needs to be centered is on two things:

What items ought to be kept secret?

Does the federal bureaucracy really need to be so big in the first place?

By far and away too much is classified material. I don't mind having things like the locations of military units and certain other generally time-sensitive information being classified, but there certainly is a whole bunch of stuff being labeled as classified material mainly because it would be embarrassing if the information was disclosed. That stuff should not be protected under an official secrets act and I wish that a harder evaluation would result in trying to decide what exactly should be considered classified material in the first place.

Speculating that the King of Saudi Arabia is an ass should not be considered an official secret.

Given that most people in Saudi Arabia aren't citizens because of extensive use of foreign labor, and the per-capita income of regular citizens is pretty low, I wonder if the citizens are really sympathetic to their king.

There are whistleblower laws that have been enacted precisely because it is important from time to time to not only encourage but also protect people who may want to publicly offer an opinion contrary to official policy. This is also a dangerous and slippery slope where you get examples such as what happened during the late 19th Century in America where employers would make employment conditional upon how you voted in the most recent election. If you voted for the "wrong" political candidate, you would lo

yes the federal bureaucracy does need to be it's size. It has to manage 300 million people of conflicting ideals, ideology, desires,etc.

What most people forget, is that the majority of the laws on the books are there because someone abused someone else, and we seek to prevent it from happening again.

Common Sense isn't really that common.

And yes speculation that the king of Saudis arabia is an ass should be kept secret. Your official position is that he is a good king, you can't contradict that view point without you yourself looking like an ass. Unless he does it himself first. How many secrets about your friends do you keep?In any given circle of friends you have that one who you let come along even though very few actually like them. Gossip like that is needed to understand the person behind the power. Such understanding is far beyond your abilities though.

What most people forget, is that the majority of the laws on the books are there because someone abused someone else, and we seek to prevent it from happening again.

Laws are not equivalent with money spent or the size of the bureaucracy. There are huge distortions in the US economy because of government spending and bureaucracy. A particularly big one is the obstacles to forming a company with 50 or more employees. A lot of onerous regulation kicks in at that point. There's also a host of rent-seeking and other parasitism. For example, US drink companies have used corn syrup for decades because sugar has been made too expensive by nonsensical government subsidy.

Typically the largest employer in most municipalities is the local school district, often followed closely by other government agencies of various kinds. The total work force in the U.S. that is employed by the government at some level is about 40% based upon some studies I've seen, and in the UK that number is a bit more than 60%.

In 1900, the largest department of the U.S. federal government was the Post Office Department with about 200,000 workers, followed by the predecessors to the Border Patrol and customs agents. The War Department usually averaged between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, and the Navy Department a little bit more than the Army but not too much more. The USMC was usually about the size of a regiment for most of its history... except in times of war.

If the federal government remained about that size, or returned to that size at the end of World War II, the number of secrets that would be needed for a bureaucracy that size would have been minimal. If America was able to thrive and survive for more than a century with essentially no significant government bureaucracy, why is one needed now? I'm saying that one of the problems with why leaks are so prevalent is precisely because there are too many people who need to keep secrets from the general public.

No, I think the majority of the laws on the books are because some rich people wanted to further abuse the peasants. Look at marijuana law, it was enacted to prop up the forests of William Randolph Hurst. Another angle, they restricted the right to vote from felons, and then made a whole bunch of innocuous acts into felonies. Read the book "Three Felonies a Day", which talks about exactly that; the average citizen commits three felonies a day because the laws are so vaguely written. I disagree with the premise, and I also disagree that the federal government needs to be so large. Or exist at all. I wonder how the EU member states' citizens feel about their (relatively) new overlord?

And yes speculation that the king of Saudis arabia is an ass should be kept secret. Your official position is that he is a good king, you can't contradict that view point without you yourself looking like an ass.

Nope. If the king IS an ass, having the official position that he's not is what makes you look like an ass... wait, actually it makes you BE an ass. If he's an ass and you call him an ass, that makes you.. honest. If he's not an ass and you call him an ass, you're an ass. Hope that helped.

Classification was originally evolved for military intelligence. Do military intelligence right, and you report only on capabilities, not intentions, opinions, or personalities. A proper MI report describes what assets and liabilities Saudi Arabia has, and stays away from speculating about whether the King or anyone else will use them a certain way. Civilian oversight decides whether someone is an enemy and will use their military assets to attack, not the military (at least that's the way it's supposed to be in the US). If a trained observer notes that the Saudis are selectively putting crews to work at sites that produce lower grade crude oil, that might actually be classified secret, if only to make it harder for the Saudis to figure out who the person generating the report is. But that report shouldn't speculate about why the Saudis might be selectively marketing their lower grade crude and conserving their top grade, let alone go into the observer's opinion of the King's personality.Part of the problem here is that civilian persons, including both diplomatic personnel and decision makers, are using the classification system that is only built to work for military intelligence and only built to work if the m.i. process is done right up to the time the decision to classify is made. The civil oversight is using classification to cover their asses, and they go to that mode easily because they're already misunderstanding how classification should work just by thinking it will work for the kind of stuff they put in a report.

"Speculating that the King of Saudi Arabia is an ass should not be considered an official secret."

Chilling Effects apply to diplomacy, not just whistleblowers.

I understand the Slashdot preference that all official communication be shouted from the rooftops and general hatred of government, but don't expect people charged with negotiation and alliance building to share those ideas.

The U.S. government had a much, much smaller profile for most of its history. Stating that the size of the government is strictly a function the number of people that "it represents" is a gross mischaracterization of the issues involved. In the 1920s, when America was already a "large empire" already industrialized with electronic communications and possessing most of the attributes of a "1st world nation", it had about a half million employees in total. Why is 100 times that number needed now.... because we have 100 times the population?

As for the Great Depression, it was horrible mismanagement on the part of the Federal Government trying to intervene into the situation under the Hoover administration that caused most of the problems, and the Roosevelt administration trying to cover up those mistakes by making many more of them. The recession of 1921 certainly could have been duplicated in 1930 with perhaps a little bit of pain for the major banks and the political elite, but the country as a whole would have been much better off as a result. It didn't take growing the federal government and instituting socialism to restore economic prosperity and I would argue that it got in the way of the economic recovery... just as similar policies today are getting in the way.

The problem with the current recession is mostly because the bankers who got stuck with the bad debt due to the housing bubble don't want to lose their shirts over a lousy investment... and want the rest of America to bail them out on what should have been an insanely risky investment. A big ouch where housing prices got back to more sane levels and a temporary deflationary period would have been over by now had the big central banks simply been allowed to collapse. The politics involved are mainly to protect those who made a bad judgment call.

More to the point, I'm arguing here that the size of the government bureaucracy is contributing to the problem of leaks by requiring many more "secrets" when more of what they are doing ought to be done by private industry or charity groups in the first place. Let people keep their own money and spend it as they best see fit and not have how that money needs to be spent by some central bureaucracy that knows jack.

How about the United States do a house cleaning on their policies? And how about the United States go back to what the constitution was all about? Maybe then you would not need to worry about this crap! Oh wait that's too simple and all of the agencies would be out of a job. Can't have that now can we!

Ha! Where is this magical place where there are no lies? Even in communities as small as two people there are plenty of lies. Not necessarily big, life-affecting lies, but certain small, keep-the-peace type lies.

You never tell another person "good to see you", when you really don't care?

Then you just say "Hi, how are you doing?" Still a perfectly polite greeting, and you've told no lies.

You never say "I don't care" when someone asks if you have a preference for lunch, even though you do care?

If they're asking me, they apparently want my opinion. Why would I not then give it? If they want something different, I'll usually go along with it, but you shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answer for.

You never give a person a false compliment just to brighten their day a little?

No. If they need picked up a little, I'll give them a real one. I've never known a person with no good qualities at all. And really, people do tend to know when you're shitting them around like that. If you want to give them a compliment, pick a genuinely good quality they possess, or something they've recently done well, and compliment them for that.

I would tend to expect the same of our diplomats. They need to be candid, sure. But they can do that by, say, dispassionately reporting the facts and leaving the high school type jabs out oft it entirely. And if what you really are doing would embarrass you if it came to light, there's an easy solution to that—don't do those things. The government could well learn from that. If the actions they're undertaking in our name wouldn't be supported by us if we knew about them, and would be embarrassing because they're unacceptable, why are they doing those things in the first place?

The problem here is not that certain inappropriate actions of the government came to light. The problem is that they ever took place at all.

I do some work for a military contractor and the sheer amount of classified information that's flying around is simply beyond astounding... A lot of things that are banal and boring are marked Top Secret in order to prevent sub-contractors from hiring foreign workers... It's not that the information itself is or needs to be Top Secret but marking it so is a way to keep jobs local...

Can't the armed forces make rules that subcontracted work cannot be exported out of the country? It's the same effect with less insanity. Hell, even if something like this needed congressional approval or a law of some sort, it's not as though it would be difficult to get it passed.

A lot of things that are banal and boring are marked Top Secret in order to prevent sub-contractors from hiring foreign workers... It's not that the information itself is or needs to be Top Secret but marking it so is a way to keep jobs local...

Nonsense. A lot of things labeled Top Secret are banal and boring because much of the day to day project work most people do is banal and boring even if it is top secret and involves technology, and has to be protected against disclosure due to the possible damage

not doing things that would hang heavy on the conscience of people, causing them to leak stuff ? not betraying them ? not misusing their trust ?

then the need for finding 'trustworthy' people who would have to go through security audits, psychiatrists, sociologists, would be at a minimum.

we are not the age of empires in which dumb lackeys blindly do whatever they are ordered to. people of this age, have conscience compared to the dark ages. you wont be able to make them do evil shit, and then keep their mouth shut, if there is a way for them to blow the whistle.

but maybe the problem in the recruitment strategy. touting being a democracy that protects freedom, you recruit people to that cause, with patriotic lines. then, they discover that, what they do actually go against what they had had joined the force for.... basically, they are being deceived with shallow excuses and justifications.

only dumb enough people would buy bullshit. the rest, will leak, regardless of whether you employ armies of psychiatrists, or not.

I think you're confusing education and intelligence. It is the informed opinion of a large segment of the population that joining the military is a stupid thing to do. Not simply uninformed, we're talking about room temperature intelligence quotient. Therefore you would expect a great deal of stupid people in the military. The fact that these stupid people get free college is irrelevant.

Although I want to say that I don't necessarily believe everyone in the military is stupid. On the contrary, it seems li

From Wikipedia (which agrees with my military background)UnclassifiedTechnically not a classification level, but is used for government documents that do not have a classification listed above. Such documents can sometimes be viewed by those without security clearance.

This document is at the same level as a menu from the kitchen of the White House. Show me documents with Noforn or better and then I'll be concerned.

Because this sort of thing never happened before WikiLeaks? This just shows that all their security responses are purely reactive and never pro-active, just like the TSA. The threats have always existed, it just goes to show that whoever has been doing risk analysis for these agencies have been completely clueless and still doesn't get it. Although, if anything, by trying to fix the causes and just blaming Wikileaks there is the benefit of at least getting a stronger system which is why I agree with what Wikileaks did.

According to the document, these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness.

Sure, as long as politicians submit to tests assessing their sanity, compassion. raionality and penchant to accumulate power and trample civil rights.

The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have.

From the summary..."...these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness. "

McCarthy, Stalin, and Mao would all be proud. Those who do not, fundamentally, "think right", will be treated... differently. Never mind the fact that screening of the type were talking about here has a dismal record at predicting behavior. It was designed to predict pathology. The two are, believe it or not, rather different things.

Is it reasonable to restrict people because the doctor/ideological officer says that they might break that oath because they are expressing unhappiness about work conditions or managment?Thoughtcrimes, anyone?

The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have.

What happens when you are married to one, or related to one. You have to file a daily report or do they just fire these people. Manning got this because he had unfettered BULK access to information. Focus on how the technology works.

Problem is, the kind of people who will pass such a test with flying colors are exactly the people who should not be given any kind of power - they are the people who do whatever is ordered. Give a psychopath money to do a dirty job and keep her mouth shut and she'll do it. Those are precisely the people that the public has an interest in keeping away from positions of power and authority. Eliminating the whistle blowers is eliminating the non-psychopaths.

At the height of the Just-Shoot-Assange media circus, Glenn Greenwald pointed out [slashdot.org] that the New York Times [nytimes.com] had just spilled the most forbidden, unlawful, immoral, unforgivable secrets of all, on it's front page: imminent troop movements.

Assange, of course, was being treated as if he'd sent countless troops and allies to their deaths with his leaks, even though the Pentagon disagreed that anybody had been hurt, whenever they were asked. (A few Afghan supporter's names had failed to be redacted in an earlier release of the "war logs"; Wikileaks corrected its processes, and fortunately, there's no news of any of those Afghans being attacked, even verbally.)

The NYT piece - about upcoming covert action in Pakistan - generated no comment of that sort whatsoever. How can that be?

Well, the Pentagon, the ground commanders, the Administration, Congressmen - not one of them said a thing. And why not?

Because it wasn't a "leak": it was a press release that didn't come with any follow-up questions allowed, or any accountability for the plan, the statement, or the subsequent action: completely anonymous.

All the benefits of a leak and none of the downside.

"Sauce for the Goose" would require EVERY leak to be followed up with a serious investigation by impartial detectives, and summary dismissal, at minimum, for the leaker. They would prefer, of course, to have complete control of the information and the ability to use it for any reason - public-serving or just partisan advantage - that they wish. Ask Val Wilson.

The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have.

But they've been telling us all along that the wikileaks folks don't qualify as "journalists" and don't deserve the legal protections that most democracies give to "news media". Employees in contact with such online information sources can easily think that such requirements don't apply, since they've been specifically told that such organizations aren't news media.

Maybe they should think of a better way of expressing what they want their employees to do. Or stop the pretense that, since there are no printing presses involved, people working on informing the public online don't qualify for legal protections such as the US's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

Isn't irony ("Situational irony" as Wikipedia calls it seems to be what most folks mean when they say it) when the opposite of what you expect to happen happens? For example, if I implemented a set of policies to prevent leaks and then those policies caused a leak - very ironic. That's not what happened here, what is the irony in this situation?

If it actually *caused* a leak, then yes. If it just didn't work, then no.

Someone being convinced to wear a bullet proof vest by a loved one who feared for their safety, and then getting shot in an area it didn't protect isn't irony. Someone being convinced to wear a bullet proof vest by a loved one who feared for their safety, and then drowning because their vest weighed them down is irony.

And in any case, the "leaked" document is very clearly marked "not classified".